


you wear your terror on your sleeve

by crownedcarl



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: (done in negan's foul-mouthed style ofc), Ambiguous/Open Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, I can't believe that's an actual tag, Inappropriate Erections, Love Confessions, M/M, Panic Attacks, Sexual Tension, but lets see there IS:, i honestly don't have much to tag for this time around you guys, i'm so alive, plot-wise it's pretty straightforward, some disturbing imagery, what else jfc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-17 01:45:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11841393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownedcarl/pseuds/crownedcarl
Summary: Subtlety is an art that Negan's still learning.





	you wear your terror on your sleeve

**Author's Note:**

> ATTENTION: ADDITIONAL TRIGGER WARNINGS (WITH SPOILERS) ARE AVAILABLE IN THE END NOTES!
> 
> i...have no excuse for my lengthy absence, or why the first thing i've posted in weeks is woefully short and terrible, but at least i'm back? after a lengthy battle with health issues, this is the best thing i could crank out on six hours of sleep, unfortunately. please forgive me wahhh
> 
> anyway, this is terrible and angsty and yeah all that Güd shit we as a collective hive mind seem to be into! i've got no particular warnings for you guys other than canon-compliant gore, violence, cursing etc, but as always, let me know if i need to tag this for anything i didn't think to
> 
> the title's from boston by the dresden dolls, aaand there's a couple of poetry references in there. i love you guys, please enjoy this piece of shit yo

He makes a graveyard out of the bone-white afternoon. Tipping his head back, neck cracking, Negan stares up at the sky, dotted with clouds, and exhales until his lungs are aching for breath, constricting inside his chest. There are bodies littering the ground, faces eaten away to the skull staring emptily up at nothing at all, and Negan steps away from the grasping, rotten fingers reaching for his ankle.

Yards away, Rick mirrors his posture. Negan thinks if he looked close enough, he’d see the spiderwebs of pale blue veins beneath Rick’s skin, the mottled gray of exhaustion hanging beneath his eyes. If he looked close enough, Negan knows he’d never be able to stop looking.

There’s smashed glass on the road, glittering crystals from the broken window of the totaled jeep scattered across the asphalt. Negan tips his head down, chin nearly meeting his sternum, and sighs. His fingers pinch at the bridge of his nose. He thinks about these things, sometimes, the inevitability of violence and his thirst for it, but nothing’s been going the way he imagined, today. Not at all.

Rick is cradling a bloody hand to his chest, eyes dazed and faraway. That’s the look Negan likes the least; the look that Rick gets when his world has cracked right open and left him adrift, floating in the serenity of the quiet afternoon. He goes away, sometimes, and Negan watches him absently, resigned to the reality of Rick’s split, the fact that his head’s gotten too loud and he’s taken a break from dealing with it.

Negan turns his face away from Rick, away from the sun. He has his own body to deal with.

His knees are scraped to ribbons, clean through his jeans. The pain isn’t a priority, but the fact of the meat being torn nearly down to the bone means there’s a risk of infection, and in this world, Negan knows that’s as good as a death sentence. He’s breathing harshly, fingers slack around Lucille, but he lifts his arm and snaps his fingers and sees Rick startle, finally crawling out of the dark hole of his thoughts to meet Negan’s eyes.

Things go wrong, sometimes, but nobody’s dead. Nobody that matters, anyway. “Search the bodies,” he tells Rick, crouching down and reaching for the still-twitching corpse beside him, shoving Lucille beneath the snapping jaws to keep it away. “Might as well salvage what we fucking can, after this shit show.”

Rick’s hand is bleeding and Negan can’t pinpoint where it began, if it’s trickling from a cut on his arm, a bite on his wrist, a scrape in his palm. He doesn’t know. He trusts Rick to say something if he’s going to turn, anyway, and takes his silence as a good sign.

At the rate that the two of them are going, they won’t make it back to either Alexandria or the Sanctuary by nightfall, which means spending the night out here, in unknown territory, holed up somewhere and praying they won’t be ambushed again. Two against four aren’t the worst fucking odds Negan has been up against, but things definitely weren’t going their way when they realized the pricks hiding in the bushes had AK-47s and a group of walkers ready to be unleashed on any sorry pricks dumb enough to wander this way.

Negan and Rick ended up being those dumb fucking pricks, and they’ve got the wounds to show for it.

He and Rick work in silence, tucking ammo into their pockets, scavenging anything else that’s even remotely useful, and then Negan beckons Rick to come around to the front of the jeep, both of them inspecting the bullet holes in the metal. Rick sighs. Negan kicks a tire, hard, and doesn’t let it show that he nearly bites clean through his tongue at the jolt of pain that slices through his foot.

“We’ll find another car,” Rick says. “The tank’s intact. We’ll siphon the fuel, get back in the morning. Should look for a place to hunker down ‘til then, though.”

There’s a trail of crimson on the asphalt, slipping through the cracks. Negan tracks the drops in reverse, eyes on Rick’s shredded palm, and says nothing. His heart is fucking pounding, but it can wait.

 _Not bit,_ Negan tells himself, almost choking on the weight of the thought. _Not fucking bit._

He stares down at the ground, at the corpses strewn across the ground, and nods. Rick’s right, and Negan moves on autopilot, following Rick as he makes his way across the parking lot, towards the abandoned houses all shot to shit. There’s bound to be at least one safe place, Negan thinks, and if there isn’t, he and Rick will be up shit creek without a paddle.

His head’s aching, and he can’t tell whether that’s from the fist he took to the goddamn jaw or the overwhelming fucking exhaustion of the day. Doesn’t matter, isn’t a priority; he makes himself stand tall as he ducks into the raided pharmacy Rick gestures him into, taking a cursory glance around. The shelves are picked clear, but the area behind the counter looks stocked enough, ‘cept Negan can’t figure out what the fuck baby powder is going to be good for in the fucking apocalypse.

Deep breaths, in and out. Rick’s staring at him, brow furrowed, so Negan forces his cracked lips to move and says “It’s not the fucking Ritz, but I’ll take it.”

Rick keeps on staring, though, all soul-searching and sad, until Negan clenches his jaw and barks “We gonna stand around all day, or are we gonna get shit done?” and, under the pretense of being useful and not falling the fuck apart, he heads for the nearest shelf and inspects what’s left. Rick follows his lead, eventually, tight-lipped and tense.

His hand’s stopped bleeding. “I can see you staring,” Rick mutters, after Negan’s third glance at the wound. He still can’t tell what caused it. “It’s alright. I’d be more worried about you.”

“That right?” Negan snaps. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re the one bleeding all over the fucking place.”

Shaking his head, Rick doesn’t back down. He should, if he knows what’s good for him, but the man’s got no self-preservation instinct whatsoever, because he reaches across the gap, puts his hand on Negan’s shoulder, and squeezes. “You’re rattled,” Rick says, flat and blunt. “I don’t know why, but you’ve done worse things than this without looking green around the gills.”

It’s an accusation, Rick demanding to know why the fuck Negan’s so unsteady on his feet and sluggish with his barbs, but when he sucks air into his lungs to respond, something gets stuck between his sternum and his throat. He sees Rick falling, all over again, and one of them dead fucks snarling, jaws snapping, tearing at Rick’s sleeve. Negan didn’t get a long look; had his own problems to deal with, but there’s been an icy pit in his stomach since Rick got up bleeding.

He thinks of what he’d have to tell Carl, if his daddy didn’t make it home. Negan wonders what would be kinder: bringing Rick back and letting him say his goodbyes, or shooting him in the head and leaving him out here. Negan figures Rick would let him, is the thing - let Negan shoot him, ‘cause no way in hell would Rick endanger his sad little community by going back, except Negan doesn’t know that he could live with that.

He doesn’t think he could live with staring Carl down and saying _your dad got bit so I shot him in the head. Sorry, kiddo._

Rick’s right, though. Negan’s seen and done worse things than what transpired today, so why the fuck is he so goddamn torn up about it?

“Negan?”

Has Rick been talking? He’s staring at Negan like he’s expecting an answer.

“You bit, Rick?”

Rick almost flinches back from the question like it’s a slap to the face. His hand hovers in the space between them, then falls to his side, curling around his belt, inching towards his gun. “No,” Rick denies, “Where the hell’d you get that idea?”

He glances down at his hand, though, and Negan’s eyes do the same. Eventually, Rick drags his sleeve up, fingers curled into his palm until he holds it flat, letting Negan look. There are deep claw marks in his wrist, and Negan’s mouth floods with bile.

“I ain’t bit,” Rick says, but he doesn’t sound all that fucking sure. “But it got its nails into me.”

Negan doesn’t know what the hell that means, whether Rick’s infected or not and, if he is, at what rate he’s going to turn. The safe bet would be to blow Rick’s brains out right here and now, but he thinks of Carl’s fucking face, and he thinks about a future without Rick Grimes in it, and he loosens his grip on Lucille just enough to relax his arm.

Rick eyes him, warily, but seems to realize Negan’s not a threat. “You turn,” Negan spits, “I will not hesitate to bash your brains in, do you hear me?”

But, goddamn, Rick can’t let it be, can he? He stares at Negan, and now that the flush from adrenaline and fighting has gone, he looks startlingly pale, realizing what Negan’s unwittingly given away after Rick’s relentless questioning. “I hear you,” he tells Negan, cocking his head, searching for some deeper fucking meaning that isn’t there. “That’s why…?”

“No clue what you mean, Ricky,” Negan maintains, staring down at the label on an expired bottle of painkillers.

“I think you do,” Rick goes on, but he’s back to rummaging through his own section of the store, leaving little bloody smudges everywhere. “You’d kill me, if I was anyone else. Wouldn’t risk your people’s safety, bringing me back, and you damn sure wouldn’t risk _yourself._ But you’re not killing me.”

It says something about Rick, his goddamn persistence and determination to be right. “You turn and try to take a bite out of my neck, Rick,” Negan scowls, “I’ll kill you, nice and clean, but until then, you better fucking pray that you don’t.”

Rick’s exhale is light with laughter, and Negan doesn’t understand what the fuck there is that’s so goddamn funny about this situation, but Rick’s hand lands on his elbow, turns Negan around, and then there’s Rick staring right at him, muttering “You look like shit,” and pushing Negan backwards, forcing his back up against the counter. “You were worried ‘bout me. You still are.”

“Fuck you very much, Rick,” Negan snorts, because at the end of the day, he’s still got his fucking pride. No matter that it’s starting to feel like a noose tightening around his neck; without his pride, Rick’s going to see right through him. “You think I want to face down your kid and tell him I splattered your brains all over this store, huh? No fucking way.”

Rick isn’t all that close, keeping a good fucking two feet between their chests, but his hand is still on Negan’s arm, and he’s not yanking it away. Doesn’t have the presence of mind to, not when his head’s foggy and his vision blurred and his heart going fucking haywire in his chest, because there is still a chance that Rick’s going to become one of these walking sacks of dead meat, and then what? Then fucking what?

“Easy,” Rick tells him, and Negan can’t figure out why until he tries to find the right words to tell Rick to fuck off and realizes his chest is seizing, out of breath and desperate.

Negan gasps “What the fuck,” and doesn’t get further than that, because his lungs aren’t working, his chest fucking hurts, his throat’s closing up and, god damn it all, Rick’s looking right at him with these soft baby blues and Negan thinks he could dissolve in this moment, turn to ashes and then scatter, because he doesn’t feel real. His feet aren’t anchoring him to the floor, and down he goes, falling.

His knees hit the floor with a crack, and Rick’s right there, his hands on Negan’s shoulders, these low, insistent mutters coming from his mouth that Negan can’t quite make out, only bits and pieces registering. _Breathe, come on now - like that, yeah, you got it, just-_

A lifetime later, Negan realizes he’s gasping for air, his vision gray and fading at the edges, but he’s breathing. “Christ fucking almighty,” he groans, one hand curling into a fist and thumping down on the floor. “Fuck. _Fuck.”_

He feels like shit, like he’s ran a goddamn marathon only to be flung out of a moving fucking truck, but feeling filters into his body, his brain coming back online. Rick’s hands are on his face, now, the rough drag of Negan’s stubble on Rick’s palms making him hiss when it catches on the edge of his wounds. Any other day, Negan would get the fuck up and make a concerted effort to remind Rick to keep his mouth shut about this whole thing, but he doesn’t have the energy.

His voice is dull when he mutters “Of all the stupid shit to have a fucking panic attack about,” and then doesn’t know where he’s going with the sentence, so he trails off, clamming up and pushing at Rick’s chest. It’s bad enough that Rick witnessed this in action, and worse, still, that he had to fucking coach Negan through it, but he’ll be damned if he has to endure another second of Rick’s pity.

“You’re alright,” Rick eventually says, and it’s not quite a statement or a question, not with the waver in Rick’s voice, but Negan will take it for what it is: reassurance, at the very least. He didn’t realize he needed it this badly ‘til now.

“I know I’m alright,” Negan scoffs, but he’s weak when he gets back up on his feet, Rick staying close but letting go of Negan’s jaw when he makes it to an upright position. “What are you, my fucking nurse?”

“No,” Rick snipes, “I’m your fucking _friend._ God forbid I give a shit.”

Funny. Negan’s been waiting ages to hear Rick say it, admitting it to himself, but it doesn’t bring Negan the satisfaction he was expecting.

“Yeah?” he asks, though, low and pointed, meeting Rick’s eyes. “That all?”

Something sparks behind Rick’s eyes. “Depends,” he responds, and Negan zeroes in on Rick’s bloody fingers when he raises his hand, wondering - would Rick taste like the dead ones, if Negan licked him clean? Would his skin still be warm beneath Negan’s tongue? “What do you want it to be?”

There’s a right answer to that question, Negan figures, but he doesn’t know what it is. All he knows is that Rick’s pitying eyes have been replaced by something darker, something primal, and Negan licks his lips when he openly confesses “A hell of a lot more,” and is met by Rick’s mouth curving in a smirk.

Goddamn, but he’s beautiful.

That’s all Negan has time to think about before there’s a hand at his jaw again, a thigh between his knees, and a dry, warm mouth against his own - given the fucking circumstances, Negan’s lucky his light-headedness is excuse enough for him to grab onto Rick’s arms and drag him closer, demanding more, heat radiating from Rick’s body like he’s a goddamn supernova.

He’s holding on like there’s an army waiting outside the door, ready to tear Rick from him and never give him back, and Negan exhales a harsh breath against Rick’s mouth, hissing between clenched teeth when Rick’s knee inches closer, nudging _up,_ pressing against Negan’s cock. It shouldn’t be maddening, after having dreamed of so much and receiving so little, but Negan’s more than happy to settle. That’s all he’ll get from Rick; scraps.

“How’s that?” Rick whispers, knowing and almost smug, ‘cept his voice is softer than it was before, not mocking, but maybe proud. “You been waiting?”

Tongue-tied and breathless, Negan bites down his answer. He buries his face in Rick’s shoulder, against the soft collar of his coat. “Goddamn right I’ve been waiting,” Negan snarls, and then he remembers Rick on the ground, Rick bleeding, Rick’s pale eyes burning into his own. His voice dies, words turning to dust in his throat.

“Never,” he finally chokes out, fist thudding weakly against Rick’s chest. He’s a fucking mess and it’s Rick’s fault. “Never fucking do that again. You get bit, I’ll fucking kill you.”

Softly, Rick whispers “I’m counting on it,” and somehow, helplessly, Negan starts to laugh, because that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it, the strangest kind of trust between him and Rick? The knowledge that if one of them goes down, the other one will take care of it, leave a pretty corpse?

Jesus, Negan can’t let himself think about it. Rick came so fucking close and is still so fucking close to turning, and if one night’s all he gets, Negan isn’t going to waste it. He doesn’t care if Rick’s tongue in his mouth means Negan’s going to turn, too, because Rick’s pushing at the front of his jeans, undoing his belt, and all Negan can do is let him.

Shit, not that Negan ever expected a fairytale wedding between him and Rick, but it might’ve been nice to at least have a bed, he thinks, because the counter is digging into the small of his back, and Rick’s boots are squeaking across the linoleum floor, so goddamn loud, and all Negan can smell is death and decay, but Rick’s hands are on him and they’re gentle, so what the fuck more could he ask for?

This right here, that’s everything. That’s all Negan could demand and expect to get. He squeezes his eyes shut and gives himself over to it; to Rick’s practiced touch and his gasping mouth, Negan’s fingers finding the hollow of Rick’s throat and searching for a pulse, scraping sweat-slick skin with his nails and teeth, desperate to hold on and not let go.

Later, when daylight breaks, Rick’s still beside him. Asleep, chest rising and falling. His face is peaceful. The trails of spiderweb-like veins beneath his eyelids are darker, now; not pale blue, but sickly purple. The blood has stopped flowing from his wounds.

Fuck Rick and his lies and his useless reassurances, and the fact that he’s making Negan do this. Fuck all of it, the road Rick has led them down, making Negan give a shit.

He steps outside, letting himself heave in lungfuls of crisp morning air. Thoughtfully, he strokes Lucille, but eventually, it comes down to his gun. Cleaner, that way. He’d trust Rick to do the same for him, despite everything.

Before he goes inside, Negan runs a hand across his eyes, and then he puts his face in his hands for a long, long time. He can hear shuffling from inside, weak and slow. Rick’s waking up.

Negan makes himself laugh, because that’s all he can do. “Shit,” he mutters, “End of the fucking road,” he says to himself, and enjoys the last flickers of sunshine on his back before he steps across the threshold and inside, into the pharmacy, finger on the trigger.

Rick reaches for him in the dark. “Sorry, sweetheart, but you did this to us,” Negan sighs, and the animals in the bushes outside flee at the sound of two shots, fired in quick succession. The day is still, after that.

**Author's Note:**

> additional spoiler warnings: major character death, implied/referenced suicide


End file.
